Kilns College Promo 2017

What we are trying to communicate?

Goal of the film is to challenge audiences to put aside the preconceived ideas and stereotypes they may have had about distance learning programs.

We will try to achieve this by showing audiences the potential of human inner- connectedness and access to resources in a distance learning setting. The potential for students to get quality personalized feedback from professors who are extremely qualified and currently working in their fields of expertise. The Students and professors applying the education in a real tangible way by dialoguing and interacting over current relevant issues. Students sharing experiences with each other from their unique cultural perspectives based on their location in the nation or around the globe.

How we'd communicate this

The film will follow a diverse class of distance students as they interact with each other and their professor about a relevant topic in our world today, weather that be race, immigration or something else. We begin with a "main character" then the film proceeds to bounce back and fourth between the different students as they go through their day to day lives, while also navigating the class discussion and assignments via social applications, video, messages, meeting platforms, library resources. We see the professor sending a video message to the class from his/her phone, with a quick thought, or update, or a suggestion for reading material on the subject. We see students doing daily life things like: riding the subway, doing the dishes, feeding a baby, working at a desk, etc... All the while being able to tune into the material via the afore mentioned applications, on their cell phones, tablets, computers etc...

The Pacing of the film is pretty quick and peppy, moving from voice to voice and to the different life situations and back.

This will allow us to incorporate a Voice Over if need be that explains the ideas we are trying to convey. ( Although if done right this potentially may not be necessary ) ...

The ending of the film would have the cast of characters seated around a conference style table, dialoging about the topic. As the shot pans backwards away from the table the students and professor on either side of the table disappear revealing our first student alone at the head of the table. We cut to an over the shoulder shot of him/her looking at their laptop screen in dialogue with the rest of the class via video meeting application. We then cut to a shot of the persons face as they smile and continue talking to the class through her headphones. We then cut to a wide shot showing him/her alone at the table.

This solidifies the idea of powerful interactive experience in a distance learning environment, while also introducing the metaphor of the invitation to join us (Kilns College) in a seat at the Table.

Visual Refferences

Video Refferences

Look / Feel / Dealing with Devices and Applications/ Potential way to do the chatting, having dialogues pop up on one side of the screen while everyday action is happening:

This one for the way they make a boring subject interesting, and how they handle computer / typing shots:

And this one for how it uses video communication apps:

Logistics

If we were to go ahead with this idea, we'd need several characters to portray a diverse set of students both life stage, as well as cultural. In addition we would need an actual Kilns Professor. All of these people would at some point come together for the final shot around the table. I have a friend in Portland who is Chinese who could come to town for that shot, as well as friends in Shanghai who could send me some establishing shots of the city to be able to place that character in. All that to say, I believe it's possible to pull off the feeling of global scale, even with our short time frame.

Once we've decided on a topic that the "class" could be discussing. I would go ahead and write the dialogue for all the characters, so that even when we are supposed to be having the "group video meetings" those would be individual videos that would be stitched together in post so we don't have to worry about scheduling all those different chats. The only group thing that would need to be scheduled would be the final table shot.